I don't know what it is about verbal creativity and substance abuse, but the two like to go hand in hand. Maybe the chemicals jostle the brain juices around just so, allowing the good stuff to trickle out. Whatever it is, writers have historically loved their booze. Flavorwire recently offered some helpful advice on how to drink like your favorite authors. Or rather, how to drink the favorite drinks of your favorite authors. If your favorite author is Hemingway you can feel free to enjoy a Mojito in his honor, but you probably shouldn't have seven of them in his likeness. Similarly, my favorite author is Kerouac. I'm not going to drink like him because I'm rather more fond of my liver than he was of his. 

I'm sure there have been plenty of sober authors, but the ones that seem to stick as popular favorites tend to be drunks. Maybe they weren't the healthiest folks and maybe they were miserable a lot, but everyone on the list produced some damn fine work in their lifetime. They all had some great quotes on their booze habits, too. My favorite is Charles Bukowski's: “That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.” I discovered upon reading this list that my boyfriend drinks exactly like Bukowski: beer in one hand, whiskey in the other. Apparently this has a name,  The Boilermaker, even though it's not a drink per se but more of a bad decision. At least the boy's in good company with his follies. 

I was a little surprised to see Burroughs on there, as I never thought of him as much of a drunk, exactly. I think you can only have one addict label at once, and it goes to the highest tier of drug you use. If you've run out of veins to shoot junk into, you're not really a drunk anymore no matter how much you still do still drink. I'm also skeptical that Burroughs sipped on vodka cokes. Seems a little limp for the man whose body processed every illegal substance under the sun and still lasted for most of a century. I could more easily see him downing exotic liqueurs or anything with a dead animal in the bottle. I was pleased to see more than just a token lady writer on the list. Writerly girls can hold their liquor and pen genius with the rest of them. I was also confused that Kerouac was missing, as he was one of the most impressive drunks of his time, but at least I now know how to sneak spiked hot tea around like Carson McCullers.